Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Part of Mayor Bloomberg's panic-inducing budget proposal called for cutting $27 million dollars from Brooklyn Public Library in 2013 -- or one third of its entire operating budget.

Late Monday a deal was worked out by the Mayor and the City Council that would restore $25 million of those cuts.

Linda E. Johnson, President and CEO of Brooklyn Public Library issued a very polite statement saying, "Thank you to the countless patrons, volunteers, staff members and elected officials who advocated on the Library's behalf. Your dedication to our cause is the reason why we will be able to keep our doors open and continue to serve our communities."

While we're all thankful, we'd like to ask the Mayor: What kind of idiot would cut one third of the budget from a major metropolitan library threatening every single educational program for its children and irreplaceable resources for business and taxpayers -- when it wasn't necessary? How can this possibly be construed as rational governing?

The same budget nonsense went on with countless essential city programs and services that were eventually restored.

So now that we've all ignored our day jobs and disrupted business trying to save the library, fire houses, child care, after-school programs and teachers, the pretend crisis that had the whole city lurching around trying to save itself just disappeared.

The Mayor plays his governing games, having one hand of the city fight its other hand in fruitless, time- and money-wasting battles.

The charitable view is that good government bores him. We'd hate to think he has a nefarious goal in all this disruption -- like keeping people who really care too busy to notice things like no-bid contractors looting the city's coffers of billions of dollars.